As we close in on putting a year of Quick’n’dirty podcasts under our belts, my co-host, Jennifer Leggio and I are always looking for ways to bring added value to our listeners/readers’ lives. We’d like to think that we continued that streak this week with social app, Mobile Roadie, Twitterer of the week, Greg Narain aka @Gregarious and special guest, Alex Plant, of NetApp. Oh yeah, we also managed to squeeze in a few minutes at the end to talk about Facebook privacy. Maybe you’ve heard that there is a little brewhaha about their latest moves?

First up was our social app of the week. I first discovered Mobile Roadie at a recent SMASH Summit in San Francisco during the social media lightning demos. You know when someone can convince you in five minutes that there is some “there” there, that the company is on the right path. In this case, the “there” was a DIY platform for the iPhone and and Android apps (iPad and more coming this summer). While I haven’t had a chance to play with the app-builder yet, they have already helped create mobile presences for several Fortune500 Companies and entertainment moguls like Taylor Swift and Ashton Kutcher. While I’m sure the resulting apps aren’t necessarily going to win any awards for innovation and style, they are a great for speed to market.

Next, we talked about our featured Twitterer of the week, Greg Narain. While I’ve known Greg for a while, I’ve only recently learned more about his social media product expertise (he’s the VP of product for Klout and co-founder at LilGrams.com). Greg is of course funny in addition to being smart but he’s also well connected and in constant search of “what’s next.” If you don’t follow him already, I’d strongly recommend that you do.

Out of order and all (Alex had a little telephony trouble), our featured guest was Alex Plant, head of social media for B2B tech giant, NetApp. During the show, Jennifer and I dug down on how social media was different in a B2B2B environment. We also peppered him a little bit on using social for customer service and even had a little fun with him asking him why (at the time) he had the Twitter n00b badge up for his avatar picture (for those that don’t know what this is, it’s when someone leaves the default image of the Twitter bird up for their Twitter profile pic). Fortunately, Alex was a good sport and fielded our questions fearlessly and elegantly.

Last but not least, Jennifer and I spent a few minutes on the latest hot topic du jour namely, Facebook and privacy. While we didn’t have as much time as we would have liked to do this topic justice, we did cover off on some of the overarching points of what we think Facebook is trying to do and what it really means for businesses and consumers alike.

Share this:

A pattern is starting to emerge with my podcast partner, Jennifer Leggio, and me… With some of stronger featured a social networks and/or Twitterers of the week, we like them so much that we end up inviting them onto the show as our guest. This week was no different when we showcased the CEO of Plancast, Mark Hendrickson.

We kicked things off by reviewing Entrustnet — a new breed of social/digital sites that take into consideration the fact that we are not immortal and that eventually, we have to consider what happens to our social and digital assets once we die. While I haven’t had a chance to try Entrustnet yet (I don’t believe Jennifer has either), we liked the concept of what these guys bring to the table (interesting back story on how they got started can be found on their site). Jennifer’s one caveat which is worth considering and that is the potential security risk of putting one’s user names and passwords online.

Next up was our aforementioned guest, Mark Hendrickson, CEO of Plancast. You can see our earlier recap of Plancast here or see what Mark’s former boss, Michael Arrington, had to say about this social network that many dub “FourSquare for future events.” Two things I will say about Mark:

He is smart and a true gentlemen. Jennifer and I peppered him with questions and he answered all of them directly and graciously.

I love his transparency regarding Plancast’s product roadmap, something we discussed at length during the show. If you want real proof of what I’m talking about, see Mark’s comment on our friend (and next week’s guest show host), Kyle Flaherty’s, post regarding Plancast.

We followed our segment with Mark Hendrickson with a very quick recap of our featured Twitterer of the week, Stephen L. Rose. Stephen is the worldwide community manager for Windows 7. He’s also a big Chicago Blackhawks fan which may have had a little something to do with his being selected. Stephen was kind enough to join us in the chat room which always makes the show a little more exciting — thanks for doing that Stephen!

Last up was our point / counterpoint of whether or not “first to market” (something that tech blogger, Robert Scoble has said is one of the keys to winning) was in fact important. Jennifer used the example of location-based services, FourSquare and Gowalla. In this particular case, FourSquare was first by a longshot coming out in 2007 — originally launching as “Dodgeball,” purchased by Google and then spun off as FourSquare. Gowalla, a relative newcomer, has caught up to FourSquare in terms of number of users and seems to be geting an equal amount of press these days. This point / counterpoint ended up being more of a discussion than a debate but hopefully we brought some interesting points to the table.

Finally, remember that starting on April 29, our show is moving to it’s new time (noon PT / 2 PM CT) and new format (30 minutes vs. 45 minutes). Please also note that we are looking for an intern/producer to help with the show 1 hour or so a week. This role will help with show scheduling, site updates, guest coordination and occasional appearances on the show. If interested, e-mail or DM Jennifer or me.

Share this:

Yes, I know I misspelled the word “technology.” That wasn’t by mistake. If you don’t get the joke, maybe you should be spending more time watching Ali G. reruns…

In all seriousness, yesterday was a really fun show. It started with me raving about newly discovered podcast platform/technology iPadio (H/T to friend Bryan Person). My co-host, Jennifer, hadn’t had a chance to spend much time with with the service yet but agreed with my assessment that they showed promise. Here are the four things I really like about their service:

The sound quality — at least on the iPhone — is crystal clear. I assume the recording on other devices is equally good (you listen for yourself with my test podcasts).

You can record offline (assuming you have an app) and upload when you have connectivity. This is good for planes or car rides where cell coverage can vary.

When I decided to give iPadio a test and mentioned so on Twitter, James O’Malley (he mans their Twitter presence) immediately chimed in and offered up his help if I needed it.

Their CEO, Mark Smith, followed up with me after my first test and let me know about a cool project they participated in recently.

Next up, we had one of our most interesting guests to date in Paul Mabray, chief strategy officer of Vintank. Not only is he funny (his Twitter picture says it all) but his company is bringing technology and innovation to one of the oldest industries in the world, namely, wine.

During our 25 minute conversation, Paul covered some of the reasons why it’s tricky to innovate in the wine industry including state regulations, dirth of eCommerce know-how and a general lack of knowledge of the end customer on the part of most of the vineyards/wineries — an issue caused by selling almost exclusively through intermediaries. As if humor and smarts weren’t enough, one of the other things that Jennifer and I really appreciated about Paul/Vintank is that he brings 16 years of wine industry experience to the table. Yup, this guy knows the space inside and out.

Speaking of smart, our featured, “Twitterer of the week” was Lon Cohen aka @Obilon. While I wasn’t as familiar with Lon as Jennifer was, he has an impressive background. His LinkedIn profile points to his background in strategic online marketing, communications, social media, SEO and content management. He also demonstrates a healthy dose of snark in his tweet stream which as anyone that follows our show knows is a huge plus in our book.

Last but not least was our point / counterpoint. This week, we talked about “what comes first, philanthropy or fans.” Jennifer talked about an example of a company that offered to send a pump to Haiti if they reached a certain number followers. Her gripe was, why not just buy the pump and send it and then encourage follower-ship based on the good deed. I argued that while it would be a noble for company X to send the pump up front, the reason they can afford to buy the pump in the first place is that they’ve made a strategic bet that the social buzz they create through this PR stunt can drive meaningful marketing results. Where Jennifer and I both agreed was that being singularly focused on quantity vs. quality of followers.

On the housekeeping front, here are three things Jennifer and I would like to to put on your radar:

As of April 29, Jennifer and I are going to move our “live broadcast” time from 6 PM ET / 3 PM PT to 3 PM ET / 12 PM PT. We are also trimming our show from 45 to 30 minutes (same format, just crisper).

We are officially looking for an unpaid intern / producer (we will pay in love, kindness and recognition). Time commitment is likely 1-2 hours / week. Ideally person has some podcast editing skills, knowledge of social networks and highly organized. If interested, DM Jennifer or me for details.

Share this:

It’s been a few weeks since my podcast partner in crime, Jennifer Leggio, and I have been able to do a Quick-n-Dirty podcast together. For two weeks in a row, travel prevented me from joining her on our weekly show. Fortunately, we had a couple of more than capable substitutes in Brian Solis (author and principal of FutureWorks) and Greg Matthews, director of innovation at Humana. Write ups from the shows with Brian and Greg can be found here and here on Jennifer’s ZDNet blog.

This week, Jennifer and I were back in the saddle again with me broadcasting live from Jackson Hole, WY (yes, I took one for the team). We had an action packed show starting with our featured social network of the week, Hollrr. Neither Jennifer or I had had much of chance to play with Hollrr but saw some decent potential in this site that Mashable likens to “Foursquare for product discovery” (full review here). Both Jennifer and I appreciated Hollrr’s off-the-shelf integration with other social networks like Twitter and Facebook and I personally look forward to getting product recommendations from friends and connections. Oh yeah, they have a pretty cool logo too.

Next up was our featured guest (and former “Twitterer of the week,”) Simon Mainwaring. If you don’t know Simon, you should. Officially, he is a branding consultant, advertising creative director, blogger, author and speaker. A former Nike creative at Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, and worldwide creative director for Motorola at Ogilvy, he now consults for brands and creative companies that are re-inventing their industries. During this week’s show, Simon shared some fascinating updates from a recent trip he took to the Middle East as a guest of the Brookings Institute. The focus was on social media and foreign policy, two disciplines that traditionally don’t share the same space. I won’t pretend to do Simon’s interview justice so just this one time, I’m MANDATING that you listen to at least Simon’s portion of the show (starts about 7 mins in and runs for aproximately 25 minutes).

Speaking of “Twitterers of the week,” this week’s choice was principal of The Community Roundtable (and close friend), Jim Storer. As I mentioned during the show, nobody has done a better job at taking community management skills to Twitter than Jim. Regularly mixing helpful tips, humor, love of bacon and Red Sox commentary into his stream, Jim is a “must add” to anyone’s Twitter follow list irrespective of what industry they are in.

Last but not least, our point/counterpoint focused on one of Jennifer’s recent blog posts, Twitter: Becoming Nothing Special. Jennifer’s post theorizes that the recent announcement of Yahoo’s partnership with Twitter pushes them from “new shiny object” into the merely “ordinary” category. While Jennifer didn’t see this as all bad, she wondered aloud if this might hurt Twitter’s future potential. Taking the opposing side of this issue, I argued that this is exactly what Twitter (and social media) need. Making Twitter and other social networks like “electricity” — something we don’t ever even think about in spite of the critical role it plays in our daily lives — is a good thing. To me, this means that it’s so ingrained in our daily lives, personal and professional, that we can’t live without it.

Looking forward to next week’s show, Jennifer and I will switch places and I will be working with friend and founder of Oneforty, Laura Fitton, as my guest host. Jennifer will be attending the RSA Conference and thus will be out of pocket for this week’s Quick-n-Dirty. I’m sure she’ll want to listen to the show (as will you). Fortunately for her, our shows are archived here and on iTunes (search on “quickndirty”).